A new Juárez is growing up across town from the old colonias, partly the result of a public-private partnership. Delphi joined Mexico's federal-housing agency in a project to build affordable homes (from $15,000 to $18,000 each) in safe neighborhoods as little as 15 minutes by bus from the plants. The program has helped cut Delphi's employee turnover from as high as 10% a month to 1.2% a year — and put newlyweds Girón and his wife Tania, via Delphi's employee savings plan, into a two-bedroom bungalow with a modern kitchen and interior, done in beige and cool mint, on a street appropriately named Hacienda de la Novia (the Bride's Ranch). Going to the U.S. to live and work doesn't cross their mind anymore. "We used to think the bosses living in El Paso didn't think too much about Mexicans," says Tania. "This makes me feel as if that's changed."

Many chronic problems are shared by the twin cities. They slurp from a common, underground desert aquifer, but Juárez's exploding population may run out of fresh water in as little as five years because it sits on a smaller portion of the aquifer. El Paso is looking to import water from 150 miles away. Druglords have killed so many people here that victims' families — on both sides of the Rio Grande — have their own support groups. Tuberculosis and hepatitis flow freely back and forth — and beyond. "The truck driver with TB who sits in our restaurants today will be in Denver or Chicago tomorrow," says Jose Manuel de la Rosa, regional dean for Texas Tech's Health Sciences Center. "Our problems will be dispersed throughout the country."

In this world on its own, where improvisation has always been the family Bible, it is often the volunteers who come to the rescue. Women on both sides have taken up a common crusade known as promotoras. With help from government agencies like Mexico's Health and Development Federation, they are creating community banks and lending trees for small businesses; they circulate in poor neighborhoods like Avon ladies, teaching health care and selling condoms; they even dig trenches for colonia septic systems.

El Paso and Juárez recently teamed up — behind the backs of their federal governments — to increase the amount of treated wastewater that Juárez can channel to agriculture. That will eventually free up river water for colonias like Anapra — and lessen the chances of El Paso's drying up along with Juárez. And there's an $833 million, 20-year plan to tap new aquifers for both cities. Says María Elena Giner, of the Border Environment Cooperation Commission: "I don't think anyone has ever confronted the scope of what we're racing against."

El Paso, meanwhile, is concerned enough about the water problem to be planning what will be the largest inland desalination plant in the U.S., costing $52 million, that will clean 20 million gal. of brackish water each day. In March the city started offering residents 50¢ per sq. ft. to rip up their water-guzzling lawns and replace them with rocks and plants native to the Chihuahua desert. Juárez has banned any new high­water use maquiladoras and is encouraging others to build water-recycling facilities.

Local officials know that they are only tinkering at the edge of a crisis. They are urging Washington and Mexico City to form autonomous regional authorities, funded by and with staff members from both nations. "Our [federal] governments treat us like a third country," says Juárez mayor Gustavo Elizondo, "so we might as well act like one."

So El Paso and Juárez will keep jury-rigging solutions. Last year, when encephalitis broke out in Juárez, El Paso's spray planes "accidentally" crossed the border to wipe out disease-carrying mosquitoes. To reduce air pollution, El Paso is helping Juárez brickmakers redesign their kilns. And to eliminate the epic waits at border crossings, businessmen (from both sides of the border) fought for — and won — a "fast lane" for U.S. and Mexican citizens who are precleared by U.S. law enforcement agencies.

Back in Anapra, Conrada Valles, 58, is hopeful enough to stay where she is. The matriarch of a large family that has given years of sweat to the maquiladoras, Valles is one of more than 100,000 Juárez residents who have no running water. She's confident the U.S. will help pony up the funds to turn on her faucets. Watching over a front "lawn" of sand and brush as a caged parrot on her porch creates an illusion of oasis, she insists, "We're all here because the Americans wanted us here."